Our first vacation!

We had a great opportunity to travel to Kansas and visit some of our favorite friends and family. This marks not only our first family vacation, but also our first road trip. Truly, given the circumstances, it could not have gone better, however, I am amazed at the things we didn't think about when we decided to take on a 10ish hour road trip with our two children.

Here are a few of our lessons learned and adventures
-Children absolutely (apparently) must use every restroom from here to Kansas and will say they don't have to go until you buckle everyone up and put the car in drive
-10 hours in a car with anyone is annoying (for me)
-Everyone gets bored in the car
-DVD players are not for children's entertainment, they are for parents sanity (we didn't use one, but I see why you would!!)
-Check the weather and be prepared that snow in March could result in not only I70 closing, but lots of side roads closing as well and that could result in your return trip not taking 8-10 hours as it should, but 16 hours. Yes, sixteen hours.

Seriously, I am amazed at our children (and my husband, but more on that in a second). They did so well with all the travel, meeting new people, and just general changes in daily life. We talked to them about 'vacation' for a few days beforehand and explained what we would be doing and we talked all about what we would do and what it would look like. They were so excited and couldn't wait to get to 'vacation'. I just wonder what they were thinking when the first part of vacation was just sitting in the car for hours..."this is vacation? Remind me to ask more questions next time."

The kids really enjoyed time with Uncle Steve and Aunt Jan. Vaughn got to play soccer and Eloise got to run around and play on the playground with Uncle Steve chasing her all around. We really needed that and so did the kids!

About Andy, remember that 10-turned-16 hours in the car? How many hours do you think I drove? If you guessed zero, you are correct! How many hours do you think I slept in the very back seat of the minivan? If you guessed 6-8, you are correct! Additionally, he got us home against all odds. He found side roads, back roads and roads less traveled AND he drove in some pretty hairy conditions. I love my husband!

Here are a few pics of our visit with our BFF's the Haddix's (or Haddi). They just had a baby in November (amazingly, we actually became parents on the same day because Audrey was born on the day we got our CONA [which was our official 'these are your kids document']), so this was our first time together with our new family configurations. If you don't know, the kids both LOVE babies and it was so fun to see them with baby Audrey. You can see in the top right photo how comfortable Audrey was with all of this (actually she was amazing with it all, too!).